Those We Love (Never Truly Leave Us)
by JessieJay13
Summary: At Hogwarts there's a legend of a monster in the Forbidden Forest, a former werewolf student who lost himself to the beast. When Stiles finds out it's not just a legend but a true story, he sets out to bring Derek Hale back.


**A/N: my first Hogwarts AU! idk how it took me this long to write one of these, but thanks to the Sterek Bingo fest on tumblr for giving me the opportunity, lol. anyway yeah so this could be read as platonic or as pre-slash, depending on if you have your shipper goggles on, either way works for me. take it as you will. =)**

* * *

"...so now he roams the Forbidden Forest, lost to the beast inside him, hungering for human flesh. And every full moon, if you listen very closely, you can hear him—"

Greenberg's dramatic delivery was interrupted by Stiles and Scott throwing their heads back and howling, much to the terror of the gaggle of first years clustered around the older boy's armchair by the fire. Greenberg sent them a nasty look as the kids scattered, but there was no house rule against butting into someone else's scary story and therefore no excuse to take points away. Of course, most prefects wouldn't be petty enough to take points from their own house, but Greenberg had always been a little special that way.

Stiles shot him a toothy, completely unrepentant grin, and Greenberg snatched up his schoolbag and stomped off to the dormitories in a huff. Thank god the guy was a year older and they didn't have to room with him. It was bad enough that Stiles had to suffer through advanced classes with him. Well, they were just the normal seventh-year classes, but for Stiles as a sixth-year student, they were considered advanced. Not that they were any more difficult for him, but they were the highest courses the school offered so he had to take what he could get.

Stiles kicked his feet up on the common room table and sank back in his own armchair to watch the first years babble to each other, staring out the window toward the ominous line of trees, searching for the monster.

"I always love freaking out the kiddies," he said with a sigh of satisfaction. "Look at 'em squeal. It's hilarious."

"It wasn't so funny when _we_ were the ones scared to set foot outside," Scott said, precariously stretching out a leg from his place on the couch so he could kick Stiles in the shin without losing his hold on Allison.

Stiles fended him off easily. " _Excuse_ you, sir," he said haughtily. " _I_ was never scared of the Forbidden Forest, monsters or no."

"Yeah, well, most of us weren't doing wandless magic at age nine," Scott said with a roll of his eyes. "For us lowly commoners, getting eaten by giant rabid wolves is actually a concern. That legend always freaked me out."

"Aw, c'mon!" Stiles said. "It's not even that believable! I mean, really, a Hogwarts student somehow gets bitten by a werewolf and goes full-on feral wolfman and now spends his days snacking on wayward students? Don't get me wrong, it makes for a great campfire tale, but—"

"You do know it's not a legend, right?" Allison cut in.

"'Course it is," Scott said, confused. "We all heard it as first years. It's tradition to scare the little kids with it. Don't they tell it down in the Slytherin dorms too?"

Allison rolled her eyes and dragged herself properly upright, dislodging Scott's arm much to his disappointment. "Sure they do, but that's not what I meant," she said. "I mean, it's not just a scary story. It's true."

Stiles tossed a decorative red and gold throw pillow at her, which she caught with her stupidly good quidditch player reflexes. "Get out of here!" he said. "It's just a stupid myth made up to keep students out of the woods. Which, by the way, I have gone snooping in many a time, and I have never seen even a _hint_ of any mutant werewolf slavering for a victim."

"I'm telling you, Stiles, it actually happened," Allison said, and she really did look like she believed it. Usually when she was pulling his leg about something, she had a hard time keeping her grin under control, but she looked perfectly earnest now as she leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "It wasn't exactly the way the story gets told," she allowed, "but he really is out there."

"The monster?" Scott asked, and really, a tried and true Gryffindor like him had no right sounding that spooked by the mere possibility.

"He really was a student," Allison insisted. "A Hufflepuff named Derek Hale. My aunt Kate dated him before he went off the rails seven years ago. He's been in the forest ever since."

"Dude, seriously?" Scott squeaked.

"Seriously?" Stiles echoed, less alarmed and more skeptical. "How did he supposedly get bitten by a rogue werewolf on school grounds? Despite the rumors, there aren't actually a bunch of them just hanging out in the woods all month waiting for a full moon so they can go a-prowling."

"He was already a werewolf," Allison said. "Fully under control, too. Accommodations were made and precautions were taken. He was totally fine."

"Then what the hell happened to him?"

Allison bit her lip. She glanced around the common room, mostly empty considering it was late in the evening on a Thursday and most people were getting ready to bed down for the night. Still, she scooted in closer to make sure they weren't overheard by the other students lingering nearby.

"His family was killed," she told them. "The whole bunch of them were werewolves, and they were well-known for it. They were targeted by Neo-Death Eaters. You know, the ones who think that all non-humans are the scum of the earth? They burned down the Hales' house with Fiendfyre. Everyone was inside, even Derek's sisters who were home for the holidays. The only reason Derek wasn't there was because he'd opted to stay at school to spend time with Kate. Otherwise, he would be dead too."

"My god," Scott breathed out, looking sick to his stomach.

Stiles couldn't blame him for that. He felt a little sick too, honestly. He knew what it was like to lose one parent to natural causes, and that had been awful enough. He couldn't even imagine how devastating it would be to lose everyone all at once to a targeted attack. At least he could be sure that Allison was telling the truth now; she would never joke about something like this.

"And the news of it, what, broke him?" he asked. "Drove him mad?"

"According to Kate, Derek had a breakdown," Allison said. "Then he transformed into a wolf. Like an _actual_ wolf, not a normal involuntary lycanthropic transformation. And he just took off into the woods, never to be heard from again."

Well, that wasn't entirely true. They had all heard howls before, distant and thin as they rang out over the treetops in the dead of night to send shivers down their spines. Sure, they had joked about werewolves waiting in the woods, but that had just been to prank the more gullible among them. They had all really thought it was normal wolves, considering they weren't confined to the full moon. Apparently they were wrong.

"He's never actually hurt anyone though, has he?" Scott asked. "He's been out there for years, right? Well, no one's been maimed or killed or bitten or anything, even if they snuck into the Forbidden Forest at night."

"He never came after me," Stiles said. "And I've been deeper into the forest than anyone but Hagrid and McGonagall." He bit his thumbnail, trying to reconcile the horrific tales they'd all been told for so long with the thought of a boy just like him who'd lost everything. "He doesn't sound like a blood-thirsty beast to me. Sounds more like he just couldn't stand to be human anymore."

Allison shrugged, leaning back to snuggle into Scott's side again. "All I know is that he was a good guy before," she said. "And now that guy is gone. It's supposed to be a scary story, but I think it's just sad."

Before long the conversation turned to the charms essay they had due the next day, but Stiles couldn't focus. His eyes kept straying over his friends' shoulders to the window, to the dark line of trees and the waning moon that hung in the sky above them. When the faint howl of a wolf reached them, mournful and painfully alone, Stiles had to wonder if Derek Hale was really gone.

* * *

Lydia didn't look up when Stiles dropped down across from her at the little table in her favorite secluded corner of the library, but that was probably because she was in the middle of a calculation. For what, Stiles couldn't begin to guess. For all that Stiles was abnormally good at actual spell-casting and the other practical aspects of magic—charms, transfiguration, defense, etc—Lydia from day one had had him (and everyone else) beat in the book smart areas—astronomy, ancient runes, arithmancy, and strangely enough, divination.

None of those were what he was here for now, though.

It took several more seconds of scribbling for Lydia to acknowledge his presence, and even then it was just with a curt: "I'm busy, Stiles."

"I can see that," he said easily. "Which laws of magic are you rewriting this time?"

"I did not rewrite them," Lydia corrected him primly. "I refined them. And I am doing neither at the moment."

"Looking _into the beyond,_ then?" Stiles asked with his best Trelawney impersonation. That earned him a dirty look, but he was not dissuaded. "How's the future looking, Lyds? Are you fishing for lottery numbers or predicting the end of days?"

"The end of days isn't something to joke about," Lydia said, staunchly ignoring his use of the nickname she refused to admit she liked in favor of lecturing him. She could never resist giving a good lecture when someone was wrong about something, which was honestly half the reason Stiles kept deliberately saying stupid things around her.

"It's not a myth. Nor is it something you can just call up on a whim whenever you want," she informed him. "People have been trying to accurately predict it for millennia with no luck."

"Ah, but they weren't Miss Lydia Martin," Stiles intoned solemnly. "If anyone were to manage that little miracle, I'd place my bet on you."

Lydia narrowed her eyes at him like she knew exactly what he was doing in stroking her ego, but the tugging up at the corners of her mouth said the tactic was working anyway. Stiles had known it would. Ravenclaw though she was, there was just enough Slytherin in her ambitious little heart to respond to gratuitous ego-stroking. Finally, she tossed down her quill, threw her strawberry blonde curls over her shoulder, and sighed like she was already regretting the whole conversation.

"What do you want, Stilinski?"

Stiles immediately sat forward in his seat, leaning over the table to be close enough that Madame Pince wouldn't overhear him when he asked, "How would you feel about taking on a little extracurricular project?"

Lydia quirked one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him. "Off the books?"

"Completely." Because no teacher in their right mind would sanction what he wanted to do.

"What do you need me for?" Lydia asked plainly. "You're perfectly capable of breaking the rules on your own, and you've got more than enough power to pull off practically anything you put your mind to. You're no slouch with creating your own spells either, if that's what you've got in mind."

"Nothing like you, Lydia, my dear," he assured her, quite truthfully. He'd been known to throw together an incantation on the fly once in a while, but Lydia was already halfway through authoring her first independent textbook. "But that's not what I'm looking for here. No, for this particular project, what I need is your potions genius."

Her eyes lit up immediately, intrigue all over her beautiful face. Everyone knew there was nothing that Lydia Martin loved more than potions, both magical and muggle. She was just as fascinated by mundane chemistry as she was alchemy, and she was brilliant beyond measure at both.

"You need a potion?" she asked, not bothering to hide how eager she was. "What kind? For what purpose? What exactly are you trying to do and just how illicit is it?"

"Well, I don't know about _illicit,_ " Stiles hedged, though he honestly didn't know how much trouble he would get into if he were caught in the midst of all this. He didn't think it was breaking any laws, at least. School rules maybe, but not laws. Probably.

Lydia wasn't impressed, but she also obviously didn't care. That was the great thing about Ravenclaws: petty things like laws meant nothing in the face of potential academic advancement.

"Whatever, Stiles. Just tell me what we're doing."

"What we're _hoping_ to do," he said, dropping his voice even lower, "is force a probably feral, chronically full-shifted werewolf back to human form against his will."

Lydia's perfect cupid's bow of a mouth fell open. Then it closed again with a snap. "Do I want to know why we're doing that?" she asked with some reluctance.

"Because I don't think he changed into that form intentionally," Stiles told her. "And it's my belief that he got stuck that way. I want to get him back. I was thinking a modified Wolfsbane potion might do the trick, but the actual modifying part is a bit beyond my skill level. Hence the _you._ "

Lydia looked for a moment like she might quibble with the ethical quandary presented by this plan, but then the lure of the challenge overwhelmed her and she pulled out a fresh sheet of parchment.

"The potion might be able to help with the feral bit," she said, quill scratching away furiously as soon as it was in her hand. "Give him back his mind, maybe even bring him back to a place where he would be willing and able to shift back on his own. But if he really is _stuck_ then we have a bigger problem, one that Wolfsbane can't fix. You said 'chronically full-shifted.' What did you mean by 'chronically?'"

"I mean he hasn't been human in seven years."

Lydia's quill actually stopped moving as she looked up at him in shock. "Seven years in wolf form?" she asked. "Merlin's beard. You'd need a hell of a spell to break through a block like that, and some seriously powerful magic to push it through."

"Don't worry about how much mojo it'll take," Stiles said, conjuring up a ball of fire with a snap of his fingers, letting the little orb roll back and forth across his knuckles. "I think I've got that part covered. I just need the spell and the juice to go with it."

Lydia actually looked a bit skeptical, which was a testament to exactly how difficult she thought this was going to be to pull off. But she relented without further protest, turning back to her notes. Already there were numbers and figures and calculations cluttering up the page. She muttered to herself as she wrote, making and discarding recipes on the fly as she worked through all the possible permutations of Wolfsbane potion and how each alteration would affect the outcome. After a few very long minutes, she stopped, frowning down at the page critically.

"So?" Stiles asked, heart thumping painfully in his chest with the anticipation. "Can we do it?"

Lydia chewed on her lower lip for a minute more, but when she looked up at him, it was with a sly half-smile. "I think we can."

* * *

It wasn't bravery that let Stiles wander about the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night, no matter what the awestruck underclassmen seemed to think. Actually, Stiles didn't really believe he was that brave a person at heart. If asked, he would readily admit that his Gryffindor sorting was misleading at best, but that was what he got for being a hat stall.

He and the Sorting Hat had argued—legitimately _argued,_ complete with name-calling and ad hominem attacks—over where he belonged until Stiles had finally put his metaphorical foot down and demanded to be put in the same house as Scott, regardless of what the darkest recesses of his mind revealed to that pompous shoe rag of a hat. And so he had been placed in Gryffindor after an agonizingly awkward six and a half minutes on the three-legged stool in front of all his new classmates.

So no, Stiles didn't think of himself as particularly Gryffindor-ish. According to Scott, Stiles had the impulse control of a Gryffindor, the mind of a Ravenclaw, the heart of a Hufflepuff, and the spite of a Slytherin, and Stiles greatly appreciated that breakdown of his personality.

He wasn't sure if it was his heart or his mind leading him into the woods tonight. On the one hand, there was a very traumatized boy trapped inside the monstrous wolf and Stiles very much wanted to save that boy, to bring him back and help him cope and readjust to being human again, no matter how difficult a task it would prove to be. On the other, there was a purely academic thrill to it as well, to seeing if he and Lydia could outsmart the boy's condition and fix a situation that dozens of adults had tried and failed to rectify over the better part of a decade.

Okay, maybe there was some Slytherin-style ambition mixed into his motivations here too, so sue him.

But overall, Stiles liked to tell himself that compassion was the biggest driving factor. It had taken him and Lydia almost four months of rigorous research and experimentation, as well as several near-disastrous failures (the results of which had been a bitch to hide from the teachers) to manage it. Now here he was with a vial of potion in hand and a hellishly complicated incantation that they were approximately eighty-seven percent certain would work as long as he could provide enough _oomph._ And all for the sake of Derek Hale.

Stiles pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders as he hovered at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He didn't know why he was hesitating. After all, he'd been in there a thousand times at least, ever since he'd dragged Scott past the treeline three weeks into their first term because he'd been utterly convinced they would find a whole bunch of dead bodies hidden in there if they just looked hard enough.

It turned out a not-so-friendly centaur had been the one to find _them_ instead. He had hauled them back to Hagrid's hut and dumped them there with stern warnings to stay out of centaur territory or else. And that was the story of how Stiles and Scott earned themselves their very first detention.

No centaur was going to drag him out tonight though. He and the centaur population had come to an understanding over the years, mostly because Stiles had proved himself not to be a threat and was always damn careful to be as respectfully non-nosy as possible where esoteric centaur business was concerned, and so he was mostly allowed to come and go as he pleased.

With one last fortifying breath, Stiles pulled out his wand and lit the tip with a flick, the little ball of light pushing back the dark for just a few feet in every direction. He could've made it brighter if he'd wanted to, could probably light the place up like midday if he really tried, but he preferred to conserve his magic for the big finale. Besides, he really wasn't scared of these woods or what lurked in them.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to stick to the path. It was a trail he himself had blazed over countless midnight expeditions and he knew it like the back of his hand, if not better. All the creatures that went bump in the night knew it by now too, and those nasties that had survived their previous encounters with him were wise enough to give it a wide berth. He was nearly as safe on this track as he was in the castle, if only by dint of his well-earned reputation.

It wasn't too cold out with the exercise he was getting, but by the time he'd been walking for an hour Stiles was starting to get chilly anyway. He pulled up the hood of his cloak, huffing out a laugh as the red fabric framed his vision. Normally he would've worn his black one, the better to blend in, but he wasn't looking to blend in right now. This time he needed to catch someone's attention. And if it helped him track down the big bad wolf, then it would be worth putting up with Scott calling him Little Red Riding Hood nonstop for the last three months. The jackass.

Besides making himself conspicuous, Stiles wasn't sure what else to do to get Derek to show himself. In six years of roaming these woods, Stiles had never seen hide nor hair of the giant wolf the stories spoke of and by hour two of his trek he was starting to think he never would.

With a groan, Stiles dropped down to sit on the ground right where he was, too frustrated to even bother expending the effort of finding a log or something.

It wasn't like there was a manual for how to attract werewolves. Despite the uptick over the last few generations of voluntary werewolves—the born and bred kind with full control of their quasi-lunar shift—the vast majority of lycanthropic lore was still focused on repelling and killing them, not making friends. He knew plenty about their weaknesses and fatal flaws, which herbs would affect them and how, which types of metal would incapacitate and which would poison if wielded correctly. None of that helped him now.

Stiles rolled a conjured fireball over his knuckles absentmindedly, dragging the tip of his wand through the dirt with his other hand to make patterns. The light from his _lumos_ hovered over his head like his own personal moon, casting a steady, cool glow in a puddle around him.

He supposed he could try a modified summoning spell, or even a reworked locator charm with Derek substituted for true North. Those were longshots, granted, but he might've been willing to try them anyway if not for the fact that he had no idea how those jerry-rigged spells would interact with the delicately crafted and not entirely stable potion he was relying on. He couldn't risk tinkering around and rendering that ineffective when failure here might actually get him killed.

A howl went up, echoing through the night and rebounding off every tree trunk. It was a familiar sound by now. Stiles had been listening for it every night since he found out the true story, chest aching a little more every time he heard it now that he knew why no one ever howled back.

 _Howled back._

Stiles almost strangled himself when he tried to leap to his feet while standing on the bottom of his cloak, but he didn't care because that was _it!_ According to several independently verified sources, a werewolf always responded to the call of its own kind. And according to a handful of unverified anecdotal accounts, they also responded to humans _mimicking_ the call of their own kind.

Stiles clutched his wand tightly in one sweaty hand and the vial of Wolfsbane 2.0 in the other, suddenly very glad that he had come alone. His friends had all offered to back him up, but he had managed to talk them out of it in the end. Scott had his prefect status to think of, which would be forfeit if he was caught out of bounds after curfew. Allison was hoping for a career as an auror and would not be helped by a mark like this on her record. And Lydia.

Lydia hadn't needed any real convincing. The two of them had been working so closely together for so long now, Stiles was starting to think she knew him better than anyone (except maybe Scott). She had seen how much of himself he had invested in this endeavor, how deeply attached he'd grown to the abstractly humanized figure that was Derek Hale. When he had said that he needed to see it through alone, she had just nodded. And reminded him that she expected to be properly credited for her work as soon as the full story came to light, which was totally fair.

As much as Stiles loved his friends and would've appreciated their support in a moment like this, he was more grateful for their absence. As he prepared to send up the metaphorical bat-signal to a giant feral werewolf, it hit him all at once how very dangerous this plan was and exactly how badly it could go wrong. Everything up to this point had been theoretical, just diagrams on paper and long rambling discussions in the library. Now there were pine needles beneath his feet and waning moonlight shining down on him and hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He would never want to drag his friends into a risky situation like this.

He was already in it though. So he cleared his throat, checked one final time that the crucial vial was still in his hand where he'd seen it last, and breathed deep.

The howl he sent up was far better than the one he and Scott had let loose in the common room so long ago, if he did say so himself. It probably wasn't anywhere near the caliber of an actual wolf howl, but it sounded pretty damn good for a scrawny human teenager, and it echoed almost as well as the real one. Stiles held his breath as the sound carried, sweat beading on his upper lip as he waited and waited and waited—

Just as the last reverberations of his call faded away into the trees, Derek answered him. Stiles immediately had to stifle a whoop of triumph, settling instead for a round of very enthusiastic air-punching until he realized that he might should keep up a dialogue with the howling thing. Honestly he didn't know how wolves communicated with each other exactly, but he figured better safe than sorry and howled again. Derek's answering call was definitely closer, which meant he was coming Stiles' way.

Fuck, he was coming Stiles' way. It would probably only be a minute or two before he got there and then their plan would be _go._ It had better work or else Stiles would be in a whole lot of trouble.

Of course it would work, he told himself. It was his and Lydia's plan, and they were the best students in the school. Between the two of them, they probably had more magic and knowledge than half the student body put together, and there was no way this plan was not going to go off without a hitch. He totally had this on lockdown. He was not terrified in the slightest, seriously, he wasn't.

Only he was. At least, when he caught his first glimpse of glowing red eyes stalking towards him through the trees, Stiles felt the first true thrills of fear, the kind that made his heart play jump rope with his intestines. Somehow he hadn't expected the red eyes but, damn it, he really should have. He had done so much research on the differences between traditional lycanthropes and the newer breed, like Derek and his family, that he should have realized and mentally prepared himself accordingly, but it somehow just hadn't occurred to him that he would be facing an alpha.

Old-school werewolves were more or less straight out of muggle horror movies. They were the ones who were average humans most of the time and then completely lost control during the full moon, became grotesque slavering beasts whose only instinct was to kill and maim. But those weren't very common nowadays, and not just because the last two Wizarding Wars had seen a staggering drop in all non-human populations.

The new breed had been, well, _bred._ It was essentially an experiment in artificial selection set up by and for lycanthropes themselves, werewolves who had theorized that it would be possible to harness and control the power of the wolf through intentional genetic shift. Through several generations of breeding powerful werewolves together to produce stronger, purer werewolves, they had successfully created a new kind of lycanthrope that was altogether different from its predecessor.

The power dynamic of alpha, beta, and omega had been an unexpected mutation, but even that seemed to serve some evolutionarily advantageous function by allowing more experienced members of a pack to keep younger and more vulnerable members in line. Coincidentally, it also served to make the alpha twice as strong as anyone else, and that power was often passed down through the family line.

Which meant that Derek, the last Hale standing, was not only completely out of his mind but _supercharged._ He was massive too. His dark coloring made it hard to see exactly how big he truly was in the shadow of the trees, but were Stiles to hazard a guess he'd say that if the wolf before him were to rear up on its hind legs, it would stand head and shoulders taller than him. And the red eyes, okay, those were just very distressing on a base level that made every instinct he had scream at him to run.

He did not run. Goddamn it, he was at least a quarter Gryffindor and he was not going to run away just because he was terrified. He had a job to do here.

Derek—because it wasn't just a wolf or an _it,_ he had to remind himself: there was a person in there—wasn't attacking just yet. He was crouched low at the edge of the little clearing Stiles had found himself in, probably taken aback to find a human where he'd expected to find someone like him.

His shock didn't last long though. A growl like thunder rolled through the clearing, sending a shudder through Stiles from head to foot, and the wolf's posture shifted. Ears pinned back, tail straight out behind him, lips pulled back from wickedly sharp teeth: a very clear threat display, all of it directed at Stiles.

For one horrifying moment, every bit of the precious plan flew out of Stiles' head leaving only a blank buzzing and a steady mantra of _shit shit gonna die shit shit shit_ in its place. Then the wolf stepped forward out of the shadow of the canopy, moonlight bright against dark grey fur and glinting off teeth that could tear him limb from limb in a heartbeat, and Stiles' brain kicked into overdrive all at once.

Before the wolf had a chance to attack, Stiles hefted the Wolfsbane potion and threw it. Admittedly, there was a good reason he wasn't on the quidditch team but in short distances like this his aim was perfectly serviceable, which meant the vial came to a rolling stop right between the creature's front paws. It did not, however, shatter like he had intended it to.

The wolf snarled, hackles raised and muscles bunching as it prepared to pounce and bite and rend flesh from bone. Stiles yanked himself backwards on reflex, stumbling over that damned cloak and sending himself crashing to the ground. His wand flew out of his hand, rolling out of reach, and this was it, this was how he would die.

Except that Stiles had never truly needed a wand, not when it really counted. His magic surged within him, whipped up by his panic and thrown out in a haphazard wave. There was a bone-rattling roar, the sharp _pop-snap_ sound of exploding glass, and then the suffocating weight that was hundreds of pounds of fur and muscle crashing down on top of him.

It took a few excruciatingly long seconds for Stiles to realize that he wasn't dead. There wasn't even any pain, at least not the kind that came with being eaten alive. His ribs still felt like they might snap any second and his lungs weren't expanding properly, but he was becoming more and more sure that the enormous mass of pure danger blanketing him was not actually trying to kill him anymore.

In fact, when Stiles cautiously shifted positions, trying to free an arm and gain leverage enough to shove the giant wolf _off_ of him so he could maybe _breathe,_ the wolf in question let out a sound suspiciously like a whimper. Then it was up and off, its departure sudden enough to leave Stiles gasping in the onslaught of air rushing back into his squashed lungs. Stiles rolled onto his side, painful coughs wracking him and pretty much every muscle in his body already protesting the rough treatment.

But he wasn't dead, and that made no sense. Until he caught sight of the remains of the vial, nothing more than shards of glass that glittered at him innocuously. There was another whining sound and Stiles whipped around to see the wolf, hunched over and pawing at his own nose, the grey fur there covered in the distinctive purplish-blue of Wolfsbane.

Blowing up the vial had worked, and it looked like maybe the potion inside had done its job too. Stiles had a healthy skepticism about what his eyes were telling him—the better to stay alive just in case he was mistaken—but some buried instinct told him that the potion had actually succeeded. That urge to flee for his life was gone and, when the wolf raised his head, Stiles saw that the red eyes were too, replaced by a pale sort of blue that looked almost human.

"Derek?" Stiles asked, hardly daring to raise his voice above a whisper. "Derek, is that you?"

The wolf made that noise again, dragging his muzzle along the grass.

"Hey, it's okay," Stiles said, aiming for soothing. "It's not gonna hurt you, I promise. It's just a little something to help you think more clearly, and I think it's working. Do you remember who you are? And how you got here?"

This time when the wolf whined, he hunkered down and pulled his paws up over his head like he was trying to hide, to disappear, and Stiles couldn't convince himself not to approach. Not even the potential threat to his body parts could make him keep his distance from a sight like that, the great beast laid low by grief, so obviously distressed. It was a feeling he recognized.

"Buddy, I know it hurts," he said, his voice coming out choked as tears pressed against the back of his eyes, stinging and insistent. "More than ever, I bet, now that your human mind is coming back to you. I don't know how wolf emotions work, but I bet it's been a long time since you've felt this pain so clearly and had to actually _think_ about it—about _them—_ "

Derek whimpered again, pitiful yips that made Stiles' heart clench in his chest until his breath stuck there. He flinched away when Stiles tried to lay a hand on his head, skittering sideways with his tail tucked between his legs, but he didn't snap or growl. Stiles held the offending hand up in surrender.

"I guess it's been a long time for that too, hasn't it?" he asked. He tried to imagine seven years without any physical contact, any comfort or affection from someone he knew and trusted. He could barely go a week without hugging Scott for all he was worth, and the urge to throw his arms around Derek's neck now was overwhelming. He stayed where he was though, kneeling on the grass far enough away not to pose a threat.

"I'm not here to hurt you, Derek," he said. "I want to help. You've been out here for a long time, and I understand why, honestly I do. I—"

Stiles had to stop and clear his throat, trying to dislodge the lump there. He let his hands fall to his lap. Derek's ears flicked forward, but he didn't show any further sign of encouragement. He was listening though, and that was enough for now.

"I lost my mom," Stiles told him, voice cracking around the old pain of it, no less potent for the intervening years. "I lost her a long time ago and it felt like my whole world fell apart then and there. Like nothing would ever be right again. Like I might actually die from missing her."

Derek crouched low, belly to the ground, and more of those pathetic noises escaped him. He shook his head like that could make Stiles' words stop, make them less true, drive the sorrow away. But he crept forward at the same time, inch by inch along the grass.

"I know you lost your family," Stiles said, heartsick at the mere thought of it. "Your pack."

Derek let out the softest and saddest howl Stiles had ever heard, too quiet to even echo, like he knew the volume didn't matter because there was no one left to hear it. The tears that clung stubbornly to Stiles' eyelashes finally escaped, spilling over to trace their way down his face. He blinked them away, clenching his hands in the folds of his cloak to keep from reaching out, from making contact before Derek was ready to accept it.

"I know you've been alone for a really long time," Stiles pushed on, "because you miss them. Because you don't know what to do or who to be without them. I get that. But Derek, you can't live like this. Your family wouldn't _want_ you to live like this."

With a final tiny howl, Derek crawled the last bit of space between them until he could bury his face in Stiles' stomach, pushing and nuzzling and whining like the world's biggest lapdog. The force of impact almost knocked Stiles over, but he just gripped the thick ruff around Derek's neck and held on tight.

"You can't stay like this forever," he said, rubbing his cheek against the warm, silky fur on the top of Derek's head. "No matter how much you're hurting, you can't let yourself disappear like this. If you do that, who'll be left to remember them? All the little things that only you know: those are what will keep them alive. Derek, the ones we love never really leave us, not as long as we keep their memories with us. But you can't do that like this. You have to come back."

At that Derek pulled away, red eyes glowing once more, and for a second Stiles thought that he'd said something terribly wrong and was going to be eaten after all. But Derek just stepped back, shaking his head back and forth hard. He rumbled low in his chest, pacing in short laps, then turning around in a tight circle and sitting heavily on his haunches.

"...What?" Stiles asked, cautiously pushing himself to his feet again. "Do you...not _want_ to turn back?"

Derek shook his huge shaggy head some more and Stiles frowned.

"Wait," he said, "was that a 'no, I don't want to turn back,' or a 'no, I _do_ want to turn back?'"

Derek growled, lip pulled back to show one impressive fang in what seemed more like a show of annoyance than an actual threat. He shook his head one more time, dropping low to rub his muzzle against the grass again where it was still blue. He let out a sharp yip.

"Oh!" Stiles said suddenly. "You mean you _can't!_ "

Derek nodded, pawing at the ground. He rushed forward to butt his head Stiles' chest, almost pushing him off his feet.

"Oof! Careful there, buddy," Stiles said with a shaky laugh. "Don't you worry, pal. I am in fact prepared for this exact eventuality. I just need my—"

Stiles couldn't see his wand anywhere, not even with the light of the moon and his hardy little lumos still floating overhead, valiantly battling the darkness. But he really needed it for this spell, which was far too complex for even _him_ to attempt wandless. He reached out with loose magic to scour his surroundings, calling his wand into his hand from where it had come to rest at the far edge of the clearing. Derek made a different noise then, one that Stiles chose to interpret as impressed.

"Yeah," he said with a lopsided grin, "I'm pretty badass. Which is why I know I can do this. You just gotta trust me, okay? Do you trust me?"

Derek only hesitated a moment, prancing back and forth before headbutting Stiles in the chest again. Stiles dared to pat him on the head, scratching at the soft place behind his ear, and it did not escape his notice that Derek leaned into the gesture before pulling away with a huff.

"Okay, you stand over there," Stiles told Derek, pointing to the center of the clearing where the moonlight was brightest. "This is a long incantation, I'm warning you now. It uses not just my power, but the moon's and yours as well. You're gonna have to _try_ for me. I know you don't know how to shift back on your own, and that's okay, but whatever of your own magic you can throw behind the _desire_ to shift back will help, no matter how much or how little that is."

Derek nodded and trotted over obediently to sit where Stiles had indicated. He faced Stiles expectedly and then there was nothing left but to do it. It was all on him now. By Merlin's ghost, he hoped this worked.

He allowed himself one minute of uncertainty and one desperate plea to whatever deity was watching, but only that. He couldn't afford doubt here. His magic, that well of natural ability that had always made him stronger than his peers, stemmed from belief. For as long as he could remember, if he believed hard enough he could make things come true, without the structure or limitations provided by the traditional framework that were spells. Now he just needed to believe harder than he ever had before. Derek was counting on him.

Stiles had practiced the incantation hundreds of times since he and Lydia had declared it finished, carrying it around in his pocket so he could study it between classes, repeating it to himself a half dozen times every night before bed, transcribing it until his hand hurt to make certain he had it right. By now he was sure even Scott would be able to recite it by heart!

That was the only thing that let it roll off his tongue now, the mix of Latin and Greek and Sanskrit and Etruscan twining together into something that felt whole, felt _alive_ in its own right. The magic inherent in the words pulled at him, reaching deeper inside him than he had ever experienced and drawing him out of himself until he felt like his very essence was floating in the still night air. The moonlight was strangely hot, a burning presence that sparked like a livewire wherever it touched him, and Derek—

Derek was a brilliant beacon, golden in the night, but there was something not right. It looked almost like a cage, like a woven net of darkness keeping his essence pinned and bound in that form.

Still chanting, letting the spell wash over and through him in pulsing waves, Stiles sank his magic in around the net, reaching for the brightness beneath it. On a level beneath the physical, he could feel Derek reaching back, pushing and straining against his bonds, but it wasn't enough. Not quite. They were tantalizingly close and yet _just_ out of reach, and Stiles closed his eyes, gritted his teeth.

He thought of Derek, so hurt and alone, who desperately needed his help to be made right. He thought of the other Hales, cut down for being nothing but what they were, who were relying on him now to bring the last of them back into the world. He thought of his own mother, who had always told him that as long as he believed in himself, he could achieve anything.

He dug deeper and with one final almighty _push,_ that golden glow spilled out to engulf him, blinding his inner eye and knocking him clean off his feet. He might have lost consciousness for a few seconds, and after that it took several seconds more for him to regain his normal vision. It felt like blinking his way through a metaphysical afterimage, the golden glow burned into the backs of his eyelids permanently.

The light of the moon seemed weak and watery in comparison, even though he knew now the force of magic it carried. Stiles' muscles were achy and sore in a way no spell had ever left them before and they didn't seem to want to engage, but he managed to force himself off his back and onto his hands and knees. He almost didn't dare to raise his head and look around the clearing, to see what he had accomplished—or what he hadn't—but he had come this far and he couldn't chicken out now.

The wolf was gone. Where just a minute ago there had been a mountain of dark grey fur and glistening teeth, now there was an expanse of tanned skin and a mess of black hair. The man was naked, kneeling with his forehead pressed to the grass, fingers dug into the earth on either side of him. His back was rising and falling rapidly with his breath and every inch of him was shaking.

Stiles lurched to his feet, swaying only a little bit with lightheadedness, and approached with a feeling like his body wasn't entirely in his control. He was reaching out a hand before he could think better of it.

Derek flinched when Stiles' hand landed on the bare skin of his back. He let out a noise that wasn't much different from the pitiful whimpers of his wolf form, curling tighter in on himself, though Stiles couldn't tell if it was from physical pain or emotional distress.

"Derek?" Stiles asked, his voice little more than a croak; he wondered if he had ended up shouting the spell instead of merely speaking it. "Derek, are you...are you hurt? Can you move?"

He could feel the tremors under his palm, wracking through Derek's newly human form. It occurred to him that Derek was probably cold. He had been covered in thick fur for the last seven years, after all. This was the first time in a long time that his vulnerable human skin had been open to the cool night air like this.

Stiles pulled his cloak off, fingers fumbling at the clasp, and tossed it over Derek's huddled form, fastidiously tugging and adjusting until it covered him completely. Then his hand fell, almost unconsciously, to Derek's dark hair, stroking softly over the tangled mess like his mother had used to do to him when he was scared or upset. It was only a moment more before Stiles realized that Derek was crying.

There was nothing to say, at least not that would do any good. Stiles simply moved closer, shifting to put an arm around Derek's wide shoulders, and made low shushing noises that he hoped were soothing until the sobs began to wane.

"Hey, big guy," Stiles said lowly, when it seemed the worst of it had passed. "You in there? Why don't you let me know that you're...you know, _you?_ This was all kind of wildly experimental. I wanna make sure I got it right and you're okay, relatively speaking."

The muscles under his arm shifted, rolling with the movement of Derek unburying his grasping hands from the dirt and pushing himself upright. His head was the last thing to come up but when it did, Stiles' breath was knocked out of him in a rush.

Derek Hale was beautiful, even with cheeks blotchy and wet with tears. He definitely wasn't the same sixteen year old boy he'd been back when he'd first transformed; his features were chiselled and defined, his sharp jawline lined with scruff. His eyes, swollen and red from all the crying, were a mishmash of striking colors that came together to give the overall impression of green, and they were bright and lucid as they came to rest on Stiles' own.

"I'm—" The word came out as a rusty, broken sound, like Derek didn't remember how to make his human voice work. He ducked his head and cleared his throat before trying again. "I'm me. I think."

Stiles sort of wanted to ask, _"You think? Don't you know who you are?"_ But then he remembered that Derek had been lost so deeply in his grief that he had literally become something entirely different, so he figured that question would be both tactless and stupid. Instead he said, "How are you feeling? Physically, I mean."

"Tired," Derek said simply. "Sore." He shivered and pulled Stiles' cloak tighter around him, dirty fingers curling into the red fabric.

"Okay," Stiles said. "Okay, that's good. When we get back to the castle, we'll have Madame Pomfrey take a look at you and make sure there's no unexpected side effects, either from the chronic full shift or the forced shift _back._ "

Derek's eyes went wide and afraid. "No," he said. "I can't—" He shook his head, mouth hung open like he couldn't put his protests into words just yet. After so long as a wolf, returning to the use of language couldn't be easy.

"Okay," Stiles said quickly because Derek looked close to panic just at the thought. "Okay, we don't have to go back just yet. We can wait a little while, give you some time to adjust to being human again. But we gotta go back eventually. You know that, right? You can't live out here anymore."

Derek's jaw clenched tight and his eyes roved over the treeline, the forest that had been his only home for so long.

Stiles reached out to put a hand over Derek's where it was holding tight to the cloak. "Derek, you don't belong out here," he said, as gently as possible. "You belong with people. You deserve to have a life again, as scary as I know that must be for you."

"Why?"

The question caught Stiles off guard. "Why what?"

It took Derek a long time to put together his next words. It looked like he was thinking very hard, his brow furrowed as those bright eyes of his traced Stiles' face with as much intensity as they had the woods around them. "Why do I deserve to have a life...when my family didn't?"

"Derek," Stiles said weakly, his heart thumping out of time in his chest. "They did. Merlin's beard, they didn't deserve what happened to them at all. But just because they lost their lives unfairly doesn't mean that you have to give up yours too. They wouldn't want that for you."

Derek looked at him for a long time, eyes welling with fresh tears. Stiles let him look and hoped he found whatever he was looking for in his expression. Finally, Derek nodded. It was a small, uneasy gesture, but it was there and it was more than Stiles had been expecting. Stiles smiled at him and squeezed Derek's hand.

"It's gonna be okay," Stiles told him. "I'm gonna make sure that you're okay, you got that? You won't be alone."

Derek was looking down at their hands, Stiles' warm fingers on top of his cold ones. Slowly, tentatively, he loosened his grip on the cloak, then released it entirely in favor of turning his hand around so that he could lace their fingers together, palm against palm. When he looked up again, there was something approaching a smile on his face, like he was trying but couldn't quite remember how the expression was supposed to work. It made his whole face transform into something younger, something bright and sweet.

He said, "Thank you." It sounded like, _"Don't leave me."_

With a shaky smile of his own, Stiles said, "Anytime." And it meant: _"I won't."_


End file.
